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Song and Spell Correspondence Master Post

This post is purely based on my playlists and music I use or have used in my practice. I have posted sample playlists before, but this is broken down according to spell type and also includes a divination section. When I use music in spellwork, I may use lyrics from a song or play the song in the background to help channel energy for the intention of the spell.

Check it out and give these songs and pieces a listen if you aren’t familiar with them 🎶

Preparation

Odds Of Even- Marilyn Manson

46 and 2- Tool

Hands Of Death (Burn, Baby, Burn)- Rob Zombie feat. Alice Cooper

With Teeth- Nine Inch Nails

Raven- Hedningarna

Strange Brew- Cream

Bullet The Blue Sky- U2

Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Woman- Santana

Inertia Creeps- Massive Attack

Season Of The Witch- Donovan

Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)- David Bowie

I Ain’t Superstitious- Jeff Beck feat. Rod Stewart

The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)- U2

Empowerment/Confidence

So What- Pink

Slave To The Rhythm- Michael Jackson

Me, Myself, and I- Beyoncé

A Woman’s Worth- Alicia Keys

Living On The Edge- Aerosmith

Everybody Is A Star- Sly And The Family Stone

Thank You ( Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) - Sly and the Family Stone

Shining Star- Earth, Wind, and Fire

Soldier Of Love- Sade

Stand My Ground- Within Temptation

Walk On- U2

Now Or Never- Threes Days Grace

You Can’t Always Get What You Want- The Rolling Stones

I’m Still Standing- Elton John

Fighter- Christina Aguilera

I Will Survive- Gloria Gaynor

It’s My Life- The Animals

Justice

…And Justice For All- Metallica

Scream- Michael Jackson

What’s Going On- Marvin Gaye

Mercy Mercy Me(The Ecology)- Marvin Gaye

God Help The Outcasts- The Hunchback of Notre Dame Soundtrack

What Goes Around… Comes Around- Justin Timberlake

Prayer For England- Massive Attack

5 To 1- The Doors

Voice Of The Voiceless- Rage Against The Machine

Uprising- Muse

Protection

We’re In This Together Now- Nine Inch Nails

The Fragile- Nine Inch Nails

You Are Not Alone- Michael Jackson

You’ve Got A Friend- James Taylor

Devil Beneath My Feet- Marilyn Manson

By Your Side- Sade

Somebody Up There Likes Me- David Bowie

Grandma’s Hands- Bill Withers

Push- Madonna

Banishing

The Thrill Is Gone- BB King

No Time- The Guess Who

Babe I’m Gonna Leave You- Led Zeppelin

It’s Over Now- Luther Vandross

Releasing The Demons- Godsmack

Irreplaceable- Beyoncé

I Want To Kill You Like They Do In The Movies- Marilyn Manson

It’s Too Late- Carole King

Get Off Of My Cloud- The Rolling Stones

Another One Bites The Dust- Queen

The Power Of Good-Bye- Madonna

Burn- Usher

Goodbye- Alicia Keys

Storm/Weather Magick

Four Seasons: Summer- Vivaldi

When The Levee Breaks- Led Zeppelin

Who’ll Stop The Rain- Creedence Clearwater Revival

Have You Ever Seen The Rain- Creedence Clearwater Revival

Here Comes The Sun- The Beatles 

Riders On The Storm- The Doors

Sea/Water Magick

The Great Below- Nine Inch Nails

Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)- Enya

The Siren- Nightwish

Moonlight Sonata-Beethoven

Water Music- Handel

La Mer- Nine Inch Nails

La Mer- Debussy

Symphony #2: Ocean- Anton Rubinstein

Black Water- Doobie Brothers

Clair De Lune- Debussy

A Warm Place- Nine Inch Nails

Cursing/Hexing/Jinxing

I Fucking Hate You- Godsmack

The Nameless- Slipknot

Harvester of Sorrow- Metallica

Antichrist Superstar- Marilyn Manson

Stupid MF- Mindless Self Indulgence

You Oughta Know- Alanis Morissette

Ænima- Tool

I Put A Spell On You (Screamin’ Jay Hawkins Cover)- Marilyn Manson

Greed- Godsmack

The Game- Disturbed

Head Like A Hole- Nine Inch Nails

A Night On Bald Mountain- Mussorgsky

It’s All Over- Three Days Grace

The Wretched- Nine Inch Nails

King Nothing- Metallica

I’m Not Jesus- Apocalyptica feat. Corey Taylor

Divination

Blackstar- David Bowie

Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)- Jimi Hendrix Experience

Voodoo- Godsmack

Wings For Marie, Part 2- Tool

Lateralus- Tool

Neptune- Holst

Many Meetings- Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Soundtrack

Things Left Unsaid- Pink Floyd

Wilderness- Dead Can Dance

Part of Nature by Stuart McMillen

Creamy Caribbean Coconut Flan with Caramel

Truth. He was the only one without an agenda. Just a bro.

[Originally posted at my blog, A Sense of Natural Wonder.]

Last night I finished looking over the proofs for my next book,Nature Spirituality From the Ground Up, which will be coming out in January 2016. One of the things that struck me was how much of the book is spent simply showing readers how to connect with the land they live with. Most books on totemism and nature spirits give a bit of context, and then leap into the “how to find your guide” exercises. It’s not until the very last bit of the second chapter that we even start trying to contact totems. Even after that point, many of the exercises are intimately linked to the physical land, getting people outside and in direct contact where possible (though the material is still accessible to those who may be housebound).

Here in the U.S., most people are critically detached from the rest of nature, at least in their perception. This book is meant to help them reconnect, not just for self-help, but because we live in such an acutely anthropocentric world that we rarely consider the effects of our actions on the other beings in the world (to include other human beings). The problem seems immense: few of us give any thought to our environmental impact, either in part or in whole. When we are unwillingly confronted with it, it’s often in the most catastrophic manners–global climate change, mass deforestation, entire species disappearing overnight. We’ve learned to simply shut off the part that cares about nature any further than maybe sorting the recycling every week.

We’re afraid to care, because caring hurts. It’s hard to find hope in a world where the environmental news is largely bad. As far as I’m concerned, though, where there’s life, there’s hope. And I want to help people find that hope as a motivator to making the world–not just themselves–healthier and better. But because we’re used to seeing “THE ENVIRONMENT” as one big global problem, I reintroduce people to their local land–their bioregion–first in small steps, and then greater ones.

Some of that may be old hat to my nature pagan compatriots. After all, we’ve been hiking and wildcrafting and paying attention to the rest of nature for years. But this book isn’t only meant for the proverbial choir. There are plenty of people interested in non-indigenous totemism who wouldn’t describe themselves as “pagan”. Some of them are looking for self-improvement; others have some inkling that a being is trying to contact them, but they aren’t sure how to proceed. Still others want to feel connected to the greater world around them, but are too used to heavily structured spiritual paths that allow little room for personal experience.

That personal experience is absolutely crucial to my writing and the exercises I offer readers. If we’re going to reconnect with the rest of nature, we have to make it relevant to our own lives. Most of us in this country are used to being preached at, something the dominant religion is good at. But we quickly learn to tune it out, the same way we often tune out the messages about how horrible we are in our environmental practices.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about human psychology, it’s that most of us don’t do well when we’re being yelled at. There really is something to that whole “you’ll catch more flies with honey than vinegar” adage. Environmental scare headlines try to terrify people into reconnecting enough to take responsibility, but that approach can be counterproductive. By making reconnection a positive, constructive and appealing concept, I hope to get people interested not just in their own personal spirituality, but how that spirituality is set in a greater world context.

From the beginning, Nature Spirituality From the Ground Up talks about the importance of totemism in relation to entire ecosystems, not just “me, me, me, what can I get out of having a totem?” Most of the books I’ve read on the topic are mostly about how the reader can connect with individual totems; there’s very little about the context all that happens in. And that goes right back into the anthropocentrism I’m trying to counteract,.

I’ve had the occasional reviewer complain that the material in my books isn’t “hardcore” enough because I rely primarily on guided meditations and accessible excursions into open areas, that I’m not telling people how to take hallucinogenic plants and soar off into the spirit world, or spend twenty days fasting in the wilderness. Well, of course not! That’s not the kind of thing that I think can be appropriately–or safely–conveyed through a book. Most people simply aren’t cut out for that much hardship and risk, and I don’t think they should be denied this sort of spirituality simply because their bodies or minds may not be able to handle ordeals, or because they lack the money to travel to remote locations in South America for entheogenic training.

As an author (and by extension a teacher) it’s my job to meet people where they’re at and help them explore someplace new. I am a product of my culture, and so is my writing. I am not part of a culture that lives close to the land and its harsh realities; mine is conveniently cushioned through technology and the idea that we are superior animals to the rest of the world. We don’t have a culture-wide system for intense rites of passage or life-changing altered states of consciousness. And I don’t have the qualifications to single-handedly create such a system, beyond what help with personal rites I can give as a Masters-level mental health counselor.

So are my practices gentler than traditional indigenous practices worldwide? Absolutely. That’s what most people in my culture can reasonably handle at this point. Trying to force them into something more intense would go over about as well as Captain Howdy’s rantings about “being awakened” in Strangeland. Sure, sudden and seemingly catastrophic experiences can cause a person to reach higher levels of inner strength and ability–but they can also cause severe physical and psychological trauma, or even kill. And, again, since we don’t have a culture in which everyone goes through an intense rite of passage at a certain age (such as adulthood), we can’t expect everyone to accept such a thing immediately.

Maybe that’s not what we need, anyway. Plenty of people engage in outdoor, nature-loving activities like backpacking, kayaking and rock climbing without the foremost notion being that they’re going into some intensely scary and dangerous place that could kill them in a moment. Most experienced outdoors people are fully aware of the risks and take necessary precautions, but their primary intent is connecting in a positive way with the rest of nature.

I think it’s okay for our nature spirituality to be the same way. I don’t think we always have to work things up as “BEWARE NATURE WILL KILL YOU AND YOU HAVE TO DO THINGS THAT COULD POSSIBLY KILL YOU IN ORDER TO FIND GUIDANCE”. I’ve spent almost twenty years gradually rediscovering my childhood love of the outdoors and its denizens, as well as developing a deeper appreciation for it. I’ve had plenty of transformative experiences without fasts or hallucinogens, and they’ve served to both improve myself as a person AND make me feel even more connected to and responsible for the rest of nature.

Does that mean there’s no place for ordeals? No; they have their place for the people who respond well to them. But they shouldn’t be held up as the one and only way to do nature spirit work. Again: meet people where they’re at, whether that’s on the couch or on the trail. You’ll reach more people, and create change on a broader scale as more people participate in the ways they’re able. And isn’t that change ultimately what we’re after, those of us who want to save the world?

Like this post? Please consider pre-ordering a copy of Nature Spirituality From the Ground Up: Connect With Totems In Your Ecosystem!